President Donald Trump was noticeably put off after a reporter revealed the meaning behind the “TACO trade” nickname for his tariff plan.
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During the swearing-in ceremony of Jeannine Pirro as the interim U.S. attorney in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, CNBC’s Megan Casella asked Trump what he thought about the nickname, which was reportedly given on Wall Street.
“Mr. President, Wall Street analysts have coined a new term called the TACO trade. They’re saying ‘Trump Always Chickens’ on the tariff threats, and that’s why markets are higher this week,” she explained. “What’s your response to that?”
Although initially appearing to be puzzled by the remark, Trump stated that he hadn’t heard about the nickname before. He then grew defensive of his tariff efforts with China and the European Union.
Trump, who has long been a champion of tariffs, previously planned to impose 50% tariffs on imports from the European Union starting on June 1. However, after the European markets began to panic, Trump about-faced on his plan and pushed the deadline for negotiations back to July 9.
“I’ve never heard that,” he said about the nickname. “You mean because I reduced China from 145 percent that I set down to 100, and then down to another number, and I said you have to open up your whole country? And because I gave the European Union a 50 percent tax tariff, and they called up and said, ‘Please let’s meet right now.'”
“And I said, OK, I’ll give you til July 9. I actually asked them, I said, what’s the date, because they weren’t willing to meet,” he continued, referring to the European Union Tariffs. “After I did what I did, they said, ‘We’ll meet any time you want.’ And we have an end date of July 9.”
President Trump Becomes Irritated Over the ‘TACO Trade’ Nickname
Trump then became heated with Casella. “We have an end date of July 9. You call that chickening out?” he asked her.
Trump then made interesting claims about his economic actions since he started his second presidential term. “This country was dying,” he said, referring to when President Biden was in office. You know, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world… Six months ago, this country was stone-cold dead. We had a country, people didn’t think it was gonna survive. And you ask a nasty question like that.”
“Don’t ever say what you said,” he angrily told Casella. “That’s a nasty question. To me, that’s the nastiest question.”
Hours after the heated exchange, a three-judge panel at the New York-based court of international trade ruled that Trump’s sweeping tariffs were illegal.
The ruling states Trump’s orders “exceeded any authority granted by the president to regulate importation by means of tariffs.”
Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, slammed the ruling, accusing the court of a “judicial coup.”